Constraining the mass of the graviton with the planetary ephemeris INPOP

Description

We use the planetary ephemeris INPOP17b to constrain the existence of a Yukawa suppression to the Newtonian potential, generically associated with the graviton's mass. We also give an interpretation of this result for a specific case of fifth force framework. We find that the residuals for the Cassini spacecraft significantly (90% C.L.) degrade for Compton wavelengths of the graviton smaller than 1.83×1013  km, which correspond to a graviton mass bigger than 6.76×10-23  eV/c2. This limit is comparable in magnitude to the one obtained by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration in the radiative regime. We also use this specific example to defend that constraints on alternative theories of gravity obtained from postfit residuals may be generically overestimated.

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